Sep 3, 2026 · 1 hr 8 min · 14 segments
Nora and Imogen are joined by Billie to discuss her forthcoming essay 'Charaktermasken: Value, Relation and Performance in Marx's Critique of Political Economy' in which she traces the history of…
Billie CashmoreGuestImogenHostNoraHostCould you say a little about how the concept of the character mask kind of arises in Marx's work, where it comes from for him.
If you know that quotation, listeners know that quotation, when Marx talks about the carnival of philosophy, right? So philosophy has to appear as a set of carnival masks, right? appearing in various guises, right? Sort of has to appear at one moment stoic, at one moment epicurean.
He uses it there, the term character mask, It appears then again in the 18th Primaire, as you might expect it to.
So if you know the quotation, as Luther donned the mask of the apostle Paul, the revolution of 1789 to 1814 draped itself alternately as the Roman Republic and so on and so forth.
He uses the term mask there, but then later on he'll use the term, the specific term character mask.
And I'll talk about the relevance of the fact that Marx seems to use both of these terms.
The one generic mask and the other specific with a specific term logical history that I will go into character mask.
And then perhaps most famously at various points in Capital Volume 1, Indeed, the idea of a character mask serves as sort of the basis of the structuralist reading of Marx, wherein individuals do not appear as themselves, he says, but rather, so Marx says that people appear or individuals appear as insofar as they are the bearers of particular economic relations or particular class interests.
or they wear the character mask of the of class relations so that's why we have like mr money bags interestingly by the way the only character mask really present in capital volume one is the one of the earning class There isn't doesn't seem to me to be a character mask present or like a kind of parodic character of the working class in Capital Volume One, which is sort of a strange asymmetry.
But in any case, and then he'll use that term character mask throughout the essay.
any sense in which you think that individuals can be full bearers of their own agency.
The agency would lie really in the structure, the totality of social relations, which is as such always absent.
This is the kind of standard structuralist reading of Marx that isn't my focus today.
But that is to say that this idea of a character mask already is intended to displace our understanding of the role of individuals in the reproduction of society.
Reproduction would be a kind of total social process of which individuals would appear as kind of various agentified or personified moments.
But I don't think that the structuralists, Ranciere most importantly, but not Althusser, get this concept right.
Could you say a little about how the concept of the character mask kind of arises in Marx's work, where it comes from for him.
If you know that quotation, listeners know that quotation, when Marx talks about the carnival of philosophy, right? So philosophy has to appear as a set of carnival masks, right? appearing in various guises, right? Sort of has to appear at one moment stoic, at one moment epicurean.
He uses it there, the term character mask, It appears then again in the 18th Primaire, as you might expect it to.
So if you know the quotation, as Luther donned the mask of the apostle Paul, the revolution of 1789 to 1814 draped itself alternately as the Roman Republic and so on and so forth.
He uses the term mask there, but then later on he'll use the term, the specific term character mask.
And I'll talk about the relevance of the fact that Marx seems to use both of these terms.
The one generic mask and the other specific with a specific term logical history that I will go into character mask.
And then perhaps most famously at various points in Capital Volume 1, Indeed, the idea of a character mask serves as sort of the basis of the structuralist reading of Marx, wherein individuals do not appear as themselves, he says, but rather, so Marx says that people appear or individuals appear as insofar as they are the bearers of particular economic relations or particular class interests.
or they wear the character mask of the of class relations so that's why we have like mr money bags interestingly by the way the only character mask really present in capital volume one is the one of the earning class There isn't doesn't seem to me to be a character mask present or like a kind of parodic character of the working class in Capital Volume One, which is sort of a strange asymmetry.
But in any case, and then he'll use that term character mask throughout the essay.
any sense in which you think that individuals can be full bearers of their own agency.
The agency would lie really in the structure, the totality of social relations, which is as such always absent.
This is the kind of standard structuralist reading of Marx that isn't my focus today.
But that is to say that this idea of a character mask already is intended to displace our understanding of the role of individuals in the reproduction of society.
Reproduction would be a kind of total social process of which individuals would appear as kind of various agentified or personified moments.
But I don't think that the structuralists, Ranciere most importantly, but not Althusser, get this concept right.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
